AbstractIn today's western society the self-help culture is widespread. It consist of varies of medias: from courses and tv-programs, to articles in papers and magazines and entire books. The aim of many of the self-help books is to help heterosexual couples with problems in their love-life. These books have a large number of readers and are sold in millions of copies around the entire western world every year. The self-help books are characterized by their strong heteronormativity where all women and all men tend to act and behave according to a given pattern.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

AbstractThe purpose of this work is to try to find out how young people's reading habits among students look at different types of secondary school, ie. both theoretical and practical, and what factors might encourage them to read more. My questions have been; do young people read today? Is there any difference between city, gender or program? What can a teacher do to inspire young people to read more? I have made a questionnaire survey among different students at two different high schools in Skaraborg. The first school is a high school located in a medium sized town, where I made inquiries to the scientific program, social program, Business and Administration Program and the Electricity Program.

The digital era has led to technical advances that have transformed the role of the public library from being a place that is used only through physical visits and material, into also being a virtual space that can be accessed by users from outside the library through Internet-based access to e-media such as e-books and streamed or downloadable audiobooks.The aim of this study is to examine how the role of public libraries in Stockholm County has changed in the process of developing into digital libraries: how this has affected their organisation, work methods and strate- gies, as well as their accessibility. The theoretical framework of the study draws on Michael K. Bucklands theory of information accessibility, which is based on six factors of access that are determined by different types of barriers. The methodology is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Primary data was gathered through an empirical survey, which consisted of a structured questionnaire distributed to most of the public libraries in Stockholm County and semi-structured interviews with selected librarians and experts for further in-depth understanding.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to, from a users perspective, investigate which factors affect the library use for six persons with disabilities or visual handicaps. My method has been a case study and the methods applied are interviews and observation. As a theoretical framework I use Tom Wilsons theories and models about information behaviour and transform them to a model about library use. Answers are sought to the following questions: - What does the library use look like for six persons with disabilities or visually handicaps? - How do they experience the library in their own municipality? - Which factors affect the disabled persons library use and experience of the library? All interviewees showed a very positive attitude towards the library and the majority of them visited the library regularly or received audio books by mail.

This study revolves around calculating the extent of appearance of both anonymously and named men and women as well as determining whether or not Yvonne Hirdman?s gender theory is applicable on two versions of a Swedish educational history textbook called Epos: historia: för gymnasieskolans kurs A (2008) and Epos [historia] 1b (2012), published for two different curriculum. Our qualitative investigation of two parts of the book?s content proves that the two principles of gender system are present in both books, although to a lesser extent in the latter version. Calculating the material, results have shown that anonymous men and women are almost equally presented in Epos 2012, which is not the case in the 2008 version.

The purpose of this study is to understand how codes of conduct function within the context of supply chain of electronic industry. This is a qualitative research and a case study is the research approach. Conclusions are that the codes of conducts could be perceived differently within different contexts. Therefore, cultural and legal issues should be considered while formulating, implementing codes of conduct or assessing the compliance..

Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students? opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history.

Transmission of reactive power is well known to cause active power losses. Thus, newcomponents who can help minimizing these expensive reactive power flows are ofgreat interest to the power distribution companies. ABB Corporate Research hasdeveloped the first electronic power breaker. One possible application for thisbreaker is transient-free switching of capacitor banks. This could prove a usefuldistribution voltage complement to the switch-sync technique, mainly applied to transmissionvoltage level.

This paper aims to describe and elaborate on a recent discursive change within the new-age movement. Since the seventies and the publishing of speculative popular science books like The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The self-aware universe by Amit Goswami, the idea that quantum physics resonates with spirituality has become the topic of hundreds of books and movies.The quantum-spiritual discourse has three distinct ways to approach quantum physics in its discussion on spirituality: The parallelistic approach which emphasizes the similarities between eastern philosophies and modern physics, the monistic-idealistic approach which tells us that mind is the foundation of matter and the scientific spiritual approach which tries to explain spiritual claims scientifically. In the quantum-spiritual discourse, quantum physical phenomena (e.g. non-locality and entanglement) are being called upon to validate metaphysical statements. The primary assumption of the discourse is that the shift of paradigm due to the establishment of modern physics also is a shift of paradigm of spirituality.With the object to examine the common claims made in the discourse, cross-references between spiritual arguments and facts of quantum physics are being made.

Internet har utvecklats snabbt de senaste åren och med utvecklingen har sociala medier blivit en stor del av Internet. Sociala medier innebär all form av kommunikation som sker på Internet så som exempelvis Tripadvisor, Facebook, Twitter, Booking.com eller Instagram. Konsumenter som väljer att kommentera upplevelser och produkter på sociala medier ökar. Enligt forskning så litar framtida konsumenter mer på andra konsumenters kommentarer än vad de litar på företagets marknadsföring över deras produkt/tjänst. Kommentarer som skrivs på olika sociala medier lämnas ofta obesvarade av tjänsteföretagen.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how young womens sexuality is described in Swedish youth novels. The analysis is based upon eight books of which four were published during the period from 1970 to 1975 and four books were published during 2000 to 2005. The theoretical framework is based on a gender theoretical perspective where Yvonne Hirdmans theories about a gender system and Ylva Elwin-Nowaks and Heléne Thomssons ideas about gender construction are crucial. Also Anthony Giddens theories about sexuality in the late modern society are used, where the plastic sexuality and the pure relationship are central ideas. The method is based upon textual analysis, and a model of analysis is constructed with its basis in the theoretical attempt.

The main thing we wanted to find out with this thesis was, can reading aloud help the natural language development. We also wanted to know how libraries in Sweden work with reading aloud and if children with reading and writing problems are being helped by being read to. We also wanted to find out what authoritarians on literature think a good reading-aloud novel should contain. To find this out we decided to do a literature study, we have taken part of a number of authoritarian opinions on this matter and we also studied some theories on this subject. We also decided to do a couple of interviews to exemplify how regular libraries work with reading aloud.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att introducera boktrailern som fenomen och marknadsföringsmetod. Likheter mellan boktrailern, bokomslaget och filmtrailern undersöks för att ge en bild av hur en "typisk" boktrailer ser ut och vilka funktioner den kan tänkas ha. Uppsatsen utforskar även boktrailerns möjligheter att nå ut till olika målgrupper i olika åldrar, samt pekar på svårigheter med att definiera en målgrupp. Ungdomslitteratur och fantasygenren kopplas samman med boktrailern och exempel ges på hur författare och förlag kan skapa relationer till läsare via Internet. Generella riktlinjer ges för vad som bör tänkas på för att tilltala flest potentiella läsare när en boktrailer används eller utformas.

ABSTRACTIn this study I have analyzed, throughout a gender perspective, two textbooks Den levandelitteraturen and Upplev litteraturen which are purposed to be used as teaching materials inSwedish schools in the subject of Swedish when teaching the history of literature. The intentof this study was to provide a gender analysis of two textbooks and the focus was on thepresentations of female and male writers, because they have not been studied earlier. In thisstudy, a qualitative text analytic method was used to achieve the best results as possible.Theories used in this study were Yvonne Hirdman?s and Raewyn Connell?s theories. Hirdmanclaims that there are differences between men and women at different levels in the societywhile Connell believes that this is a myth because, according to her, men and women arepsychologically alike.